Description

Triple Town is a match-3 puzzle game with a fantasy town building theme. Players have to make best use of the very limited space by building and upgrading as many houses as they can before they run out of vacant tiles, and hence possible moves on the game grid. This is done by placing objects that are handed out in random order. Three adjoining tufts of grass turn into a bush at the position of the last-placed tuft, three bushes can be turned into one tree, and three trees into one house. In the same way, houses of the same level can be upgraded by positioning three of them together.

Apart from static tiles, bears and ninja bears can also appear. They roam the game board and prevent the placement of other objects at their current location. When bears are fenced in, they die and leave behind a gravestone. Like with plants and houses, these can be combined in groups of three, upon which they will turn into churches and cathedrals. Other special tiles include crystals, which can combine with any two other tiles of the same type, and robots that destroy an unwanted tile of choice, leaving behind a vacant road block (although destroying upgraded structures carries a score penalty). An in-game shop allows exchanging points for specific items or special features, such as undoing the last move or the placement of time machines, which take up valuable board space but allow players to see what items they will receive next. At the end of a round, the town is rated according to development level. A number of coins and bonus items is issued according to the score reached. These can also be earned during gameplay by matching four or more items, or upgrading buildings to the highest possible level.

Coins and items can be used on the hometown screen, which acts as both a free-form building area and main menu for the game, where the next round to be played can be chosen by boarding one of several ships. The hometown area allows the construction of resource-gathering plots that combine in the same way as items in regular game rounds and occasionally yield new items as profit, as well as purely decorative buildings and items. The hometown area can, in contrast to the main playing fields, also be expanded by purchasing additional plots of land. The game is open-ended; the four map types can be replayed at will to earn more rewards, in order to further upgrade and decorate the personal hometown.

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Trivia

Yeti Town lawsuit

Developer Spry Fox have sued Six Waves, developers of a very similar game called Yeti Town, over copyright infringement. The claim was that Yeti Town directly copied several gameplay and user interface elements from Triple Town. The court ruled in favor of Spry Fox, stating that while many of the contested elements are not unique enough to be protected under copyright law, Yeti Town's depiction of the actual game field was so close to that of Triple Town as to infringe on Spry Fox's rights. As part of the ruling, the rights to Yeti Town were passed to Spry Fox, who subsequently removed it from the market. (Sources: Pocket Gamer, Forbes)